Persona 5 Royal Review - Is It Worth Getting?

Persona 5 Royal has finally released in the west so I decided to give a quick Persona 5 Royal review. This Persona 5 Royal review contains no spoilers, so you shouldn't worry if you're still deciding if Persona 5 Royal is worth getting over the original Persona 5.

You know, I didn’t expect to make a persona 5 video this soon. But here we are now. Now that Persona 5 royal has finally been released in the west and I’ve had a chance to play it to completion. I can give my really brief thoughts. This is going to be a bit of an odd video. My usual videos about Atlus games have been deep dives into what the game is and talking about the theming and symbolism. But this time I want to do something a little different since the game is still pretty new. I’ll be giving an overview of the new content and changes that Royal brings to the table, and also injecting my opinion on these changes to see if it’s worth picking up over the original since that game goes for like $20 at this point which is a total steal.

Persona 5[a] is a role-playing video game developed by Atlus. The game is chronologically the sixth installment in the Persona series, which is part of the larger Megami Tensei franchise. It was released for the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in Japan in September 2016 and worldwide in April 2017. It was published by Atlus in Japan and North America and by Deep Silver in Europe and Australia. An expanded version featuring new content, Persona 5 Royal,[b] was released for PlayStation 4 in Japan in October 2019 and worldwide in March 2020.

Persona 5 takes place in modern-day Tokyo and follows Joker after his transfer to Shujin Academy due to being put on probation for an assault of which he was falsely accused. During a school year, he and other students awaken to special powers, becoming a group of secret vigilantes known as the Phantom Thieves of Hearts. They explore the Metaverse, a supernatural realm born from humanity's subconscious desires, to steal malevolent intent from the hearts of adults. As with previous games in the series, the party battles enemies known as Shadows using physical manifestations of their psyche known as the Persona. The game incorporates role-playing and dungeon crawling elements alongside social simulation scenarios.

Persona 5 was developed by P-Studio, an internal development studio within Atlus led by game director and producer Katsura Hashino. Along with Hashino, returning staff from earlier Persona games included character designer Shigenori Soejima and music composer Shoji Meguro. Preparatory work began during the development of Persona 4, with full development beginning after the release of Catherine in 2011. First announced in 2013, Persona 5 was delayed from its original late 2014 release date due to the game not being fully finished. The game's themes revolved around attaining freedom from the limitations of modern society, while its story was strongly inspired by picaresque fiction and the party's Personas being based on well-known literary outlaws and rebels.

Persona 5 was met with critical acclaim, with praise given to its visual presentation and art direction, cast, gameplay, and music. The game is considered to be one of the greatest role-playing games of all time and was nominated for and won multiple awards. The game shipped over three million copies worldwide by the end of 2019, making it the best-selling entry in the overall Megami Tensei franchise. Several other related media have also been released, including two spin-off games, Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight and Persona 5 Scramble, as well as manga and anime adaptations. The game's cast has also made appearances in other games, such as Joker appearing as a playable character in the 2018 crossover fighting game Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

[tjofcarolina]

I already bought the game, just here to evaluate my decision

[brony]

Also, because the vanilla persona 5 dlc is free for royal means the full value proposition between both games+the vanilla dlc is greatly in royals favor. Since all that dlc for vanilla is still like 60-70 bucks.

[tomm]

I just finished P5R 2 days ago. And I feel so empty now. Such a great game

[Cryothia]

3:42 The Baton Pass already increased damage after every pass in the base game. The UI didn’t do a good job of showing it like they do in P5R.

[sammoisture]

I very much agree with the difficulty. I overall think the combat has been improved and it’s more fun than the original P5 combat to me but the game is easier than the original game and I wish the merciless mode was harder. I played it on hard and had a comfortable play tho. Amazing video!

[ACasualWeeb]

Great vid as always! I love Royal but I agree on how easy it is. I'm a complete JRPG newbie and have played all the Persona games on Easy or Normal so when I went into royal I did the same picking Normal because of my familiarity with Persona 5. Needless to say by the 4th Palace I was incredibly overleveled and one turning almost every enemy so I decided to change the difficulty to hard. The game was still not as challenging as I wanted it to be so I ended up challenging myself by only using one persona and not doing the strength confidant at all. The game was finally challenging and gratifying for me despite missing out on some of the games features just to challenge myself I ended up loving the battle changes and my self-imposed challenge. Keep up the great videos! :)

[yokohaloless]

I have both versions of the game. Played the original and after I heard Royal was coming out, I refused to replay the base game even though I wanted to. I do not regret my decision because of its length, but the alterations and additions to the game were also all the more satisfying. 5 was great on its own, but then Royal drops in and kisses you. So so good

[ThatBoyAqua]

I really want to buy this now, Fantastic video!

[jabbpapi]

Bro we need a full gameplay walkthrough with you. Every other Youtuber I watched made me infuriated with their decisions or how much they forgot about social events, you sound like the perfect walkthrough person, you're thorough and smart, it's perfect.

[KillaSharkAttack]

I love royal. Easily the best rerelease of a persona game. I really enjoyed the added story in the game. I hate atlus for their dlc practices in this

[RedskyRising]

"The game doesn't have any challenges that test you on those skills"


The 5 hours I spent on Lavenza alone debunk this lol.
Still the best fight in the game though

[VideoGameLedgen]

I wouldn’t exactly say that the story changes “nothing” since at the very least the resolves of the P5 cast are altered by this among a couple other things. I get what you mean though

[Garrulous]

I just finished Royal and I never knew about things like cleaning Leblanc or gun ammo refreshing after each battle.

[spyroclone]

I ended up buying the DLC that included the new DLC Persona (Athena, Raoul, Female Orpheus, and Izanagi-no-Okami) and trust me when I say that Izanagi-no-Okami is there most broken persona there is and I refused to use him until around the 5th palace because he can kill bosses on hard like it's nothing. Izanagi-no-Okami is my favorite persona of all time so it's nice that he's powerful, it's also nice that the game allows you to max every stat of your personas without needing to level them via the alarm system. An added bonus is that we can download all the previous DLC that was present in vanilla persona 5 for free though the Legacy DLC pack.

[stovepip]

If you have never played a persona before, royal is the best first time experience

[zeldafreak]

I am genuinely surprised at how few youtubers mention one of the BEST MUSIC TRACKS that are introduced in Persona 5 Royal. I won't say what it is to avoid spoilers, but it's quite possibly the one track that beats Life Will Change.

[mosdef]

Came from the persona 3 review and both that video and this one were great.

You forgot to mention the changes involving ailments however. You can now pair even more elements and ailment conditions to get knockdowns and bonus damage granted you have them unlocked. Also there are elemental attachments to weapons, and the red enemies in dungeons are now super mini boss like enemies that usually have no weaknesses and can really only be killed through the new changes.

I think this game is too easy in a lot of ways and so you don't really need to utilize these tactics, especially on normal. But these changes are game changing and definitely important for future persona and smt games.

[WednesdayMan]

this is really good but the Okumura boss fight was one hell of an absurdly difficult boss, it was just poorly designed.

[brendendene]

Being my first full persona game that I would play since P3FES (I missed out on both the PS3 and PS4), I really hope the game ends up living up to that impact that P3 had on me

[slojcabronas]

As far as I remember, baton pass gave you damage boost with each pass in original too